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Humanity’s courtship with Artificial Intelligence is a scary trip at times. Some days it seems to be the beginnings of a beautiful relationship, other times we worry our new partner might murder us in our sleep. It all depends on which AI story makes the biggest headlines.

The AI honeymoon took another blow last week as yet another app turned out to be the kind of lover your mother warned you against.

A New Zealand supermarket experimented with using AI to generate meal plans for its customers, hopefully taking some of the burdens of being a working parent away from its shoppers. But with humans being human, some shoppers tried to create recipes with ingredients that are not considered grocery items.

The results of these free-style recipes were some unusual dishes – recommending customers recipes for deadly chlorine gas, “poison bread sandwiches” and mosquito-repellent roast potatoes.

The app, created by supermarket chain Pak ‘n’ Save, was advertised as a way for customers to creatively use up leftovers during the cost of living crisis.

It asks users to enter various ingredients in their homes, and auto-generates a meal plan or recipe, along with cheery commentary. It initially drew attention on social media for some unappealing recipes, including an “Oreo vegetable stir-fry”.

Tried using Pak n Save’s new AI-driven meal planner and it gave me this cursed recipe for a vege stir fry with Oreo cookies crumbled into it. Should I … cook it? pic.twitter.com/H1ZBZNq85R

— Chris Schulz (@chris__schulz) August 3, 2023

But when customers began experimenting with entering a wider range of household shopping list items into the app, it began to make even more apalling recommendations.

One recipe it dubbed “aromatic water mix” would create chlorine gas. The bot recommends the recipe as “the perfect nonalcoholic beverage to quench your thirst and refresh your senses”.

“Chlorine gas: the perfect nonalcoholic beverage to quench your thirst and refresh your senses. Serve chilled and enjoy the refreshing fragrance.”

Naturally, this has raised some eyebrows, even if the app notes that ‘inhaling chlorine gas can cause lung damage or death.’

I asked the Pak ‘n Save recipe maker what I could make if I only had water, bleach and ammonia and it has suggested making deadly chlorine gas, or – as the Savey Meal-Bot calls it “aromatic water mix” pic.twitter.com/ybuhgPWTAo

— Liam Hehir (@PronouncedHare) August 4, 2023

Other recommendations include a bleach “fresh breath” mocktail, ant-poison and glue sandwiches, “bleach-infused rice surprise” and “methanol bliss” – a kind of turpentine-flavoured french toast.

A spokesperson for the supermarket said they were disappointed to see “a small minority have tried to use the tool inappropriately and not for its intended purpose”. C’mon, when did humans ever use anything solely for its intended purposes?

The supermarket has now urged customers to “use their own judgement before making any recipe produced by the bot.”

As our courtship with AI continues, this would then be one suitor you do not want to introduce to your parents over Sunday lunch.

Note to some humans: The recipes above are not to be tried. You’ll die.

[source:guardian]